Adult Child

Your childhood decided who people are before they ever opened their mouths. Sometimes that means missing the person who is hurting you. Sometimes it means creating the harm you were braced for.
There are two different ways your trauma keeps you from seeing a relationship for what it actually is. Betrayal blindness is not seeing the ways people are treating you like shit. Attachment blindness is not being able to see the people you're in relationships with accurately in the first place. Today we're diving into both.
✨ What this episode explores
▪️ Betrayal Blindness — Why your mind, body and nervous system will keep you from seeing that someone you depend on is hurting you, and what they are protecting you from.
▪️ What Actually Counts as a Parent Betraying You — Why it isn't just the obvious abuse, and the one thing that makes all of it betrayal no matter what it looked like.
▪️ Seeing the Incident But Not the Pattern — The more common version for adult children, where you clock every individual hurt but never let them add up to a conclusion about the relationship.
▪️ The Shame That Holds the Blindness in Place — Why being treated badly doesn't register as wrong when part of you believes you deserve it, and what has to come first.
▪️ Attachment Blindness — How the attachment system you built to survive your family becomes the lens you see every relationship through, and why it looks for what it expects instead of what is actually there.
▪️ 3 Ways You See Harm That Isn't There — How transference, black and white thinking and emotional reasoning each turn a feeling into a conclusion about somebody.
▪️ The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy — How the way you see someone shapes how you treat them, how that shapes the way they respond, and why you take their response as proof you were right all along.
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✨SAFE WITHIN: A 7-week live somatic journey to get out of your head and into your body. Starts Wed. Oct 7th. 👉 adultchildpodcast.com/safewithin
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An apology is the parent telling you they feel bad. An amends is the parent telling you exactly what they did and what it cost you.
Dr. Ken Adams and Leilani Sinclair are certified sex addiction therapists and the co-authors of the upcoming book Unburdening Adult Children of Sex Addicts, out January 7th. Ken is also the author of Silently Seduced, the book that put covert incest and parent-child enmeshment on the map.
Their new workbook walks a family healing from sex addiction through the process of both parents taking accountability for the impact they had on their child. This is a conversation about what a parent would actually have to do to unburden you, and why an apology is not the same thing as an amends.
✨ What this episode explores
▪️ Apology vs. Amends — Why saying sorry and taking accountability are two different acts, and what the second one requires that the first one doesn't.
▪️ Impact Statements — Why putting the specifics of how you were affected on paper does something for you that talking about it doesn't, even if nobody ever hears
▪️ When Accountability Never Comes — Why the healing looks different when the accountability isn't coming, and what it means to give yourself the thing your parent won't.
▪️ The Emotional Caretaker of the Betrayed Parent — What it does to a kid to be recruited as the confidant for the parent who was hurt, and why that role is the hardest one to put down.
▪️ Why Siblings Don't Come Out of It the Same — How the roles you each played and what you each knew leave you with different versions of the same childhood.
▪️ Finding Out in Adulthood — What it does to somebody when the truth about a parent surfaces at forty, and why that's its own trauma rather than a delayed version of everyone else's.
A Light in the Dark Workshop for Adult Children of Sexually Addicted Parents (ACSAs)
Contact Leilani - leilani@leilanisinclair.com
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🎧 If this episode resonated, you might also love:
▪️ Ep 163 | Breaking The Shame: Adult Children of Sex Addicts w/ Dr. Kenneth Adams
▪️Ep 243 | The Caregiving Trap: When the Parent You're Estranged From Becomes Your Responsibility w/ Katherine St. Claire
-----------------------
⚓JOIN THE SHITSHOW — The Adult Child Healing Community
6 weekly Zoom support groups · Discussion boards · Peer connection
👉 theshitshow.mn.co

🗞️ SIGN UP FOR SHITSHOW NATION
Get the newsletter for community updates, healing insights & early access to workshops.
➡️ Join here

💁‍♀️ SUPPORT THE POD
☕ Buy Me a Coffee – help Andrea (and her cats) eat
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💬 CONNECT WITH ANDREA
Instagram → @adultchildpod
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Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

✨SAFE WITHIN: A 7-week live somatic journey to get out of your head and into your body. Starts Wed. Oct 7th. 👉 adultchildpodcast.com/safewithin
--
An apology is the parent telling you they feel bad. An amends is the parent telling you exactly what they did and what it cost you.
Dr. Ken Adams and Leilani Sinclair are certified sex addiction therapists and the co-authors of the upcoming book Unburdening Adult Children of Sex Addicts, out January 7th. Ken is also the author of Silently Seduced, the book that put covert incest and parent-child enmeshment on the map.
Their new workbook walks a family healing from sex addiction through the process of both parents taking accountability for the impact they had on their child. This is a conversation about what a parent would actually have to do to unburden you, and why an apology is not the same thing as an amends.
✨ What this episode explores
▪️ Apology vs. Amends — Why saying sorry and taking accountability are two different acts, and what the second one requires that the first one doesn't.
▪️ Impact Statements — Why putting the specifics of how you were affected on paper does something for you that talking about it doesn't, even if nobody ever hears
▪️ When Accountability Never Comes — Why the healing looks different when the accountability isn't coming, and what it means to give yourself the thing your parent won't.
▪️ The Emotional Caretaker of the Betrayed Parent — What it does to a kid to be recruited as the confidant for the parent who was hurt, and why that role is the hardest one to put down.
▪️ Why Siblings Don't Come Out of It the Same — How the roles you each played and what you each knew leave you with different versions of the same childhood.
▪️ Finding Out in Adulthood — What it does to somebody when the truth about a parent surfaces at forty, and why that's its own trauma rather than a delayed version of everyone else's.
A Light in the Dark Workshop for Adult Children of Sexually Addicted Parents (ACSAs)
Contact Leilani - leilani@leilanisinclair.com
-----------------------
🎧 If this episode resonated, you might also love:
▪️ Ep 101 | The Neuroscience of Toxic Shame w/ Robyn Gobbel
▪️ Ep 137 | Healing The Inner Child Through Parts Work w/ Michelle Chalfant
▪️ Ep 215 | Repeat or Recover w/ Dr. Tian Dayton: The Cost of Relational Trauma
-----------------------
⚓JOIN THE SHITSHOW — The Adult Child Healing Community
6 weekly Zoom support groups · Discussion boards · Peer connection
👉 theshitshow.mn.co

🗞️ SIGN UP FOR SHITSHOW NATION
Get the newsletter for community updates, healing insights & early access to workshops.
➡️ Join here

💁‍♀️ SUPPORT THE POD
☕ Buy Me a Coffee – help Andrea (and her cats) eat
🛍️ Shop Shitshow Merch

💬 CONNECT WITH ANDREA
Instagram → @adultchildpod
TikTok → @adultchildpod
YouTube → @adultchildpod

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

✨SAFE WITHIN: A 7-week live somatic journey to get out of your head and into your body. Starts Wed. Oct 7th. 👉 adultchildpodcast.com/safewithin
--
Sometimes the hardest part of healing isn't sitting in the pain. It's letting yourself actually feel something good.
Dr. MaryCatherine McDonald is a research professor and life coach who specializes in the psychology and philosophy of trauma, and the author of The Joy Reset: Six Ways Trauma Steals Happiness. She grew up the inconvenient truth teller in a home ruled by her mother's fear, and lost both parents within a year of each other in her mid-twenties, which sent her into years of panic she had to learn to survive from the ground up. This is a conversation about why we push good feelings away, and how to let them in without pretending the hard stuff isn't there.
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Check out Omaha Steaks and use my code BEEF for a great deal: https://www.omahasteaks.com
-----------------------
⚓JOIN THE SHITSHOW — The Adult Child Healing Community
6 weekly Zoom support groups · Discussion boards · Peer connection
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🗞️ SIGN UP FOR SHITSHOW NATION
Get the newsletter for community updates, healing insights & early access to workshops.
➡️ Join here

💁‍♀️ SUPPORT THE POD
☕ Buy Me a Coffee – help Andrea (and her cats) eat
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Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

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